


wild eyes

by PlacentaMilk



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, HOW DO YOU TAG THINGS, Nora has PTSD, but it's short and they actually get nowhere, but wouldn't you?, so I didn't exactly tag it as such, this is like heavy reliant on Hancock and Nora's relationship, uh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:15:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26895061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlacentaMilk/pseuds/PlacentaMilk
Summary: "The world is broken...We are the last choking embers of a fire waiting to burn out. We started pulling our planet apart in the name of progress and blind ambition. The greed of man has devoured this earth until there was nothing left. We watch as time eats us alive.A generation born... to witness the end of the world."
Relationships: John Hancock/Female Sole Survivor, John Hancock/Nora (Fallout)
Kudos: 4





	wild eyes

**Author's Note:**

> this is actually just me writing my own game play LOL

A part of her dies when she exits the vault.

Not just a part of her. She dies. Entirely. The world is too bright, the sun barring down on her like it's moved miles closer to the Earth.

There is no greenery.

She doesn't cry then. She didn't cry while looking at her husband from beyond the cryopod glass. She doesn't cry now, looking at the wasteland full of dead trees and brown grass.

She sort of... stumbles her way back down the path she vividly remembers taking yesterday. A couple hours ago, even. When she trips and catches herself on the dirt with her hands, she notices her fingernails are black. Something that they weren't before she desended into the vault.

She doesn't remember how she made it to Concord, or what happened leading up to the events of her being in a power suit and screaming in pure terror as a _dinosaur_ rushes at her. The thing pins her down and knocks her around, her head banging painfully against the poorly padded helmet.

The minigun is blaring in her hands, she can feel the heat of it pressed against her suit but she doesn't care. She keeps her finger tightly pulling the trigger, and doesn't even really let up when the monster has stopped clawing at her armor, falling limp ontop of her.

"It's dead!" She faintly hears Preston yelling at her from the balcony. "It's dead, quit shooting!"

The minigun jams anyway, and she finally allows her index finger to relax. There's still shooting going on from behind, and she's completely useless underneath the dinosaur. "I'm trapped!" She screams back up at him, her left hand scrabbling to find her pistol before the raiders can come around and get a good shot at her.

Panic is the first and only thing she feels for a long time.

Preston and Sturges help roll the deathclaw off of her when everything is said and done, with Jun Long helping her slide out from underneath it. They're planning on going to Sanctuary, says that it could be a nice place for them to set up.

She doesn't follow them. She gives them the power armor and minigun and leaves with dogmeat. Maybe at some other point in time, she'll be able to face her home again, be able to look Codsworth in his face and bear to hear him call her 'Mum,' but today isn't that day.

The Great Green Jewel of the Commonwealth is... it's nothing but a shanty town built on paranoia. The people don't trust the mayor much less their own family - a man named Kyle gets his head blown off by security because he wouldn't stop threatening his own brother. Piper, the girl who's really all bark and no bite, fills her in on... well, on everything she can think of as long as she gets a story in return.

Nora takes in knowledge like a sponge. The Institute is the main thing Piper keeps pushing, almost insinuating that they might be the reason behind her son's kidnapping and Nate's death.

"Nat will be home soon..." Piper looks at the watch on her wrist, worn and scratched as it is. "For the last part of our interview, I really want you to make a statement to Diamond City. The threat of kidnapping is all but ignored in the Commonwealth. Everyone wants to just pretend it doesn't happen. What would you say to someone out there who has lost a loved one but is too scared or numb to the world to look for them?"

Nora will never know what Piper sees when she looks back up at the pre-war woman. "Find who's responsible and make them pay. Simple as that."

Piper gazes at her for a moment before looking back down at her journal. When she shrugs, it's a barely-there sort of thing. "I'll take anger over apathy any day. Good quote. Thanks, blue."

She's invited to stay for dinner, and she really only does so because it's late and the 'detective agency' should be closed by now, she thinks. Nat is a cute 12-year-old girl who's so much like her sister it nearly gives Nora whiplash. "Who's that?" Nat asks when she walks in through the front door, immediately spotting the out-of-place blue vault suit plastered on the woman sitting in her living room.

"This is my new friend, blue. Be nice!" Piper warns her while she gets up from the couch to put her journal on the big printing press next to the stairs. Nora is surprised it still works, but that goes for pretty much everything she comes across now.

Nat walks over to stand in front of the woman, squinting her eyes at her. "It's nice to meet you Nat," Nora says, minding her manners. The Earth may have changed but she has not. Not yet.

"A vault dweller huh?"

"More or less."

When Nat looks over at her sister - who's watching the pair carefully - she asks "What's for dinner?"

"I was thinking your favorite? Some noodles and brahmin steak?"

"What the hell is a brahmin?" Nora interjects, her eyebrows furrowing in.

This is when Piper finally decides to come sitting back on the couch, her reporter hat resting on the press next to her forgotten journal. "You don't know what a brahmin is?" Nat asks, deciding to sit down on the other side of the couch, reaching down to untie her sneakers.

"She didn't know what a deathclaw was either," Piper helps in a totally non-helpful way, smiling at the younger mischievously.

Nora knows she'll be tormented between the two sibling, but resigns herself to her fate never the less. The noodles for dinner are just ramen, and the brahmin is just... mutated cow. It's okay. She can't quite complain when this is probably the best she'll get now. Nat asks her tons of questions like "where did you find the nail polish?"

Piper returns every question answered of Nats with her own, but instead, it's "What was it like before the bombs fell?" and "What would you do regularly that you can't do now?"

Her stomach rolls throughout the entirety of dinner, and eventually she can't even force herself to shove the noodles Piper so generously paid for down her throat anymore. "Hey Nat, you want the rest of my noodles?" She asks, nudging the younger with her elbow. Nat doesn't hesitate in taking her food, and when Nora turns towards Piper again, she pops her knuckles and stands up. "I'm pretty tired. You said Dugoutt inn is pretty much right across from here, right?"

"Aw, you don't have to go Blue. You could sleep on my couch? It's the best I have," she teases, smiling in that big way she does.

She turns down the offer for multiple reasons and when she finally steps outside, she vomits on the side of Piper's house. It's everything she ate and nothing more. It's been 200 years since she last ate something, maybe it's just because her stomach isn't used to it, or maybe it's because the food is still radiated, she doesn't know. She walks to the Dugoutt inn and for the first time in three days, since waking up, she has some time to be alone with her thoughts.

She doesn't sleep easily despite keeping her mind as blank as she can manage.

In the morning, Ellie will tell her where the detective last went, and she'll set back out to the marketplace to gather supplies. Artulo is nice, he leans in a bit too close over the counter and smiles at her in a certain way that implies he's flirting when he says "So you're the new girl." Nora finally gets to see why Piper called Mryna "Crazy Mryna" and only gets to buy stuff from her once she convinces the woman that she is not, in fact, a synth. Whatever those are.

Piper mentioned it but didn't go into details, and she barely remembers it now anyway.

Dogmeat is waiting for her by the gate. She had let him wander the place last night to find any goodies he could sniff out, but unfortunately he didn't find any or did and didn't bother to save any for her.  
  


_

She can't really bring herself to watch Kellogg's memory of the vault, but she's seeing through Kellogg's eyes, and she has no choice.

 _"Even then, I knew it was a mistake leaving her alive,"_ Kellogg's voice echoes in her own mind. _"I understood that kind of revenge. No one better."_

She sees herself through Kellogg's eyes, banging on the cryo pod's glass confused and begging to be let out. She's softer here. No scars. Her nails are still black. _"But I was cocky enough to assume I could handle some soft, pre-war vault dweller, even if she somehow got thawed out."_ She, Kellogg, looks away and towards the pod across from hers when the institute agent points at it. _"At least I know those Institute bastards will soon get what's coming to them, too. If she could take me out, they won't be able to hide from her for long."_

She doesn't access Kellogg's memory on her husband, or her baby. This time, she doesn't get to watch helplessly as Nate dies, trying to protect their baby. This time she's the one holding the gun. The recoil barely jerks her shoulder as the bullet finds it's home in-between Nate's eyes.

She can't breathe.

Suddenly she finds herself back in the memory lounger, unable to remember what happened and how she got pulled out. "Slow movements, okay? I don't know what side effects the procedure might've had," Dr. Amari says calmly, her hands held up to show that she means no harm towards the panicked woman. "How do you feel?"

Nora sucks in a breath through her teeth as she sits up, her hands coming to clutch at her temples. "I have this... burning feeling inside my skull." She exhales, feeling sweat beading up on her forehead and around her nose. The harsh lights above her do nothing to help. "It's like my head is on fire."

Amari scoffs, handing the woman a can of pure water. "That's not surprising. All the synapses in your brain have just been pulled apart, connected to someone else, and then pulled back together."

If her hands shake when she takes the water and greedily gulps it down, neither comment on it. "I injected you with a large stimpak when I was pulling you out. That should ease things. Are you... ready to talk about what happened in there?"

She still doesn't remember what happened afterward. If there was anything afterward, or if Dr. Amari just pulled her out. So she pauses to take in a much needed deep breath, wiping the sweat off her forehead with her sleeve, "You were along for the ride, weren't you? You saw everything I saw."

"Yes. So we know that the Institute uses teleportation. Their greatest secret has finally been revealed." The woman says, grabbing her clipboard that has a piece of paper with writing on it. "But that only opens up more questions. How does it work? Where do we go next?"

Amari looks up for her input, and if she had it in her to laugh, she would. "Don't look at me, doctor. This stuff is beyond me."

"Hm... let me think... What about that memory involving Virgil, the rogue scientist?" Yeah, Nora definitely missed out on a couple of things. "If he were alive, we would have a common enemy. He might help us."

"How do we even track him down?"

"The memory said the Institute tracked him down to the Glowing Sea, but that seems crazy. A mad man would think twice before going there."

"Why?" Nora frowns, her eyebrows furrowing in. "What makes the Glowing Sea so dangerous?"

Dr. Amari doesn't look at her like she's crazy for not knowing something, for once, and it's a blissful change. "The name says it all. Radiation. So much that nothing there could possibly live. Nothing pleasant, at least. Navigating radioactive hazards is nothing new, but the Glowing Sea could kill a man in seconds. That's why it doesn't make sense... Virgil fleeing into that hell. The exposure alone..."

Nora finally gets up, a grimace on her face. "Then he's dead already. It's a waste of time."

"No," Dr. Amari sets her clipboard down on the table behind her, ready to steady the woman if she needs it. "He must've gone there for a reason. He has to be alive. He... must have been prepared for it. Look, we don't any options left. You have to go after him."

The look she tries to give the doctor fails short of scathing, but in the end she just ends up sighing and closes her eyes. The bright lights burn them anyway. "How do I fight that much radiation, Doctor?"

In the morning, she'll get back on the road to Sanctuary. Nick had Kellogg's voice the minute she walked out, telling her he knew that he should've kept her 'on ice.' _"There's something wrong with you, Nick. I don't want you with me."_

For now, she walks to the third rail, fully intending on drinking away the headache forming in the creases of her eyes. She ignores Mayor Hancock talking down at the settlers and shop keepers, trying to shove her way past them, but ultimately giving up. "Now, who's scared of the Institute?" Hancock asks, the people replying with a loud, "Not us!"

"And which town in the Commonwealth should the Institute not fuck with?"

"Goodneighbor!"

"And who's in charge of Goodneighbor?"

"Hancock! Of the people, for the people!"

Nora will be the first to admit, she _likes_ Goodneighbor. It's shady, but it isn't holding up a false pretense like Diamond City. Paranoia isn't weighing down on people here, and the drifters actually like Mayor Hancock.

She likes his attitude too.

"If you're looking for some caps, see Bobbi No Nose," someone whispers in her ear as they slip by her. "She's paying a hefty sum of caps."

In the morning, she doesn't know why, but she snoops out this "Bobbi No Nose." Maybe for the caps, because she'll need plenty of those for the rad-x and radaway, but looking back at it now she regrets just taking some strangers word for it. She'd recognize that shock of orange hair anywhere.

"Bobbi, what're you doing here?" Fahrenheit says like she's disappointed.

"Shit..." Bobbi mutters under her breath.

"You seriously didn't think Hancock would catch wind of your scheme? He _took you in,_ Bobbi. And you're stealing from him?"

"Don't listen to her," the ghoul says, turning back towards her two lackeys.

"What does this have to do with Hancock?" Nora asks, eyes flicking from Bobbi to Fahrenheit. She had her suspicions since they started this whole adventure that this wasn't what Bobbi said it was.

"Yeah... about that. As Mel guessed, this isn't the Diamond City strong room."

Mel curses to Nora's right, pinching the bridge of his nose and shutting his eyes. "I see the rest of you are in the dark about this. Nice, No-Nose." Fahrenheit looks down on the three of them in pity. Nora doesn't like that look. "You all just broke into Hancock's storeroom. You know. Hancock? The mayor of Goodneighbor?"

" _Dammit Bobbi_ ," Mel grits out through his teeth.

"Listen guys," Bobbi starts, but Nora's hand is already slipping the safety off of her pistol. "I know this isn't what you expected, but there are still a ton of caps on the line here. Help me take her out, and all of it's ours."

"This is Hancock we're ripping off here," the blonde man throws his arms out to gesture at the room around them. "He tends to hold grudges."

"Counteroffer," Fahrenheit cuts in, tilting her head down at them. "Just go back into your tunnel and we can forget this ever happened. What do you say?" She asks, staring directly at Nora. It's clear that the decision rests on her.

Why did she agree to this?

"You lied to us, Bobbi." Nora turns to face the ghoul, lifting up Kellogg's pistol to level it with the woman's head, feeling the heavyweight in her hand. Her eyes are full of steel, and this is when Bobbi realizes she fucked up. "You have to pay."

Bobbi's brain matter is splattered onto the ground before she can even react. When Fahrenheit approaches her, she regards the woman with begrudging respect. "You made the right move," She comments, her chin tilted up at the woman who's shorter than her.

"How did you find us?" Nora asks, because she has to know. Fahrenheit is always glued to the Mayor's side.

"If you think Hancock doesn't know about everything going on in his territory, then you're mistaken. You have to know that you guys weren't exactly silent down there."

Nora gives a little smile, a scoff. "You're right. I'm sorry to cause you trouble."

Fahrenheit grins back, rolling her eyes. It's different from the uptight attitude Nora was greeted with when she first entered Goodneighbor. "The boss will understand. You didn't know what you were doing..." The orange-haired girl pauses for a second, looking at the pistol Nora holds. "Here."

She turns around to go sorting through one of the cable cars, eventually pulling out a minigun. "Take this. A token, for doing the right thing."

Another minigun.

"I call her Ashmaker. Take good care of her, and go pay your respects to Hancock in person!" Fahrenheit calls when Nora eventually turns to exit the building. The ginger knows more than she lets on. She thinks the vault dweller would be good for them. For Hancock, though she wouldn't say it.

"I will."

_

The trek back to Goodneighbor is actually kind of far. She sees Wolfgang and Simone - two drug peddlers who were, dare she say, terrorizing a trader and her son - standing at the gate. She catches Wolfgang's eye when she walks by and holds it until she brushes past him.

She'll make good on her promise of killing him if he tries anything.

She leaves her Ashmaker with Kleo, for the small sum of 100 caps. "Guaranteed safe for a month," the robot drawled. It hurt to part with the caps, but she felt like it would be wrong to step into the Mayor's office geared and gunned to the teeth. Besides, she couldn't lug that heavy gun back to Sanctuary, whenever she went. That was a long walk.

"Well if it ain't Bobbi's little patsy," Mayor Hancock says when she comes walking up the spiraling staircase and into the room, her eyes sweeping over the array of chems on the table. By now, it's been a full month since she stepped out of the vaults. She knew chems were just part of the average day for the average person. "Here, for protecting my stash," he says, tossing her a bag that clinks with caps when she catches them. "Wise decision, putting Bobbi down like that."

The bag of caps is full, and she'll bet there's at least enough in there to make up for the loss to Kleo. "Bobbi tricked me, she got what she deserved," Nora says simply, going to sit on the couch across from the ghoul. Fahrenheit is nowhere to be found.

The smile that slips over Hancock's face is nothing more than a satisfied grin. "Yeah. That's usually how the story goes around here... hm..." He hums to himself, looking her up and down. Easy there, Hancock.

"Wanna take a smoke with me?"

And this is how she finds herself on the balcony she saw Hancock on yesterday, sharing a cigarette with him. "Let me tell ya', this classy little tricorner hat of mine is getting heavy." He inhales the cigarette sharply and lets it out slowly before holding it out to her. "Am I turning into the man? Some kind of tyrant?"

Nora bites on the end of the cigarette and inhales the stale Tabacco. She didn't smoke. Well, she didn't before the bombs, at least. Pre-war wives couldn't. Nate told her he never minded, but she did and had always declined hits off of his cigarette. What did she need it for anyway? She was pregnant. Now, though, is a different story. A different life.

"I spend all my time putting down the people I would've been proud to scheme with just a few years ago. I need to... take a walk again. Get a grip on what really matters: living free."

She stops humming, unaware she was doing it until she actually needed to talk. "Can you just do that? Aren't you the Mayor?"

"Hey," he sends her a look, grabbing the cigarette back from her. "The mayor is still the mayor whether he's 'in residence' or not. I've walked out of here plenty of times. Keeps me honest," with this, his left hand comes up to tap his temple. "Can't let power get to my head. That's not what being in charge of Goodneighbor is about."

She nods, agreeing, eyes gazing over the drifters and wanderers on the streets below them. It's almost like an open-ended question. He's not saying it, she gets the feeling he doesn't want to intrude, but he's almost offering to travel along with her. Why else would he be telling her these things? She didn't know him.

She needs caps. She needs a crew. Weapons, ammo, medkits, radaway. She needs a companion to travel the Glowing Sea with her, because she just knows deep in her gut it isn't going to be pleasant, even if she didn't have to worry about the radiation. Piper and dogmeat were obviously out of the question, she wouldn't be able to get the second suit of power patched up enough for Piper, and how the hell do you keep a dog protected from radiation?

Nick was out of the equation, she had just told him that she didn't want him with her literally last night. Codsworth... she couldn't bear to see him again. Not yet. Not so soon.

A ghoul, however...

"If you're heading out, why not come with me?"

The corners of his lips curl into a grin as he inhales more of the smoke. That's what he wanted. "Yeah. I like it." He tries to make it sound like it was her idea, but they both know he wanted it first. "You might just be the right kind of trouble."

"Oh, I'm definitely going to get us into trouble. A lot of it."

He laughs, and it's deep and throaty. She doesn't dwell on it. "Let me just have a little chat with my community first. Give them the news."

She nods and goes to head back inside, but his foot keeps the door open. He wants her to hear, and as the people below chant "Of the people, for the people!" she can't help but smile. Just a little bit.

"You ready to go?" She asks when he steps back inside, and he nods. "Ready whenever you are, sweetheart."

The two stop at Daisy's quickly, she needs food and hopes that Daisy can supply. How they got from "You won't believe what's in the 'Is it Food or Not' section" to "So, let's hear it. What was it like before the war?" Daisy grins at her like she's caught a mouse in her claws. Daisy would know what it was like. She's assuming Nora doesn't.

"I had a beautiful house..." Nora trails off, eyes unfocusing and gazing off somewhere behind Daisy's shoulder. Hancock is next door at Kleo's, and whether he'd be eavesdropping or not doesn't cross her mind. She doesn't really spare the ghoul a thought while reminiscing. "A white picket fence, with the greenest grass you'd ever seen. It was peaceful. Not like now. Not at all."

Daisy sniffs, and when Nora focuses back on her, she's smiling weakly. "It was, wasn't it? Sorry. Last thing you want to see is an old ghoul like me getting all teary-eyed."

In honesty, Nora didn't mind. "So what about you? What do you remember before the war?"

"Oh, sweety," she waves a hand as if to shoo the topic away, like Nora wouldn't want to hear it. "I was an angry woman back then. Thought the world was sick and wouldn't give me my due. Then it all ended, and well, I ended in a way."

Nora felt that. She felt that more than she felt possibly anything else. So she nodded solemnly, meeting Daisy's sympathetic eyes with her own. "Becoming a Ghoul... maybe when you get to be my age, everything starts to look like fate. Anyway... I like your story better, whether or not it's true."

Nota gave the woman a smile. A secret, small smile just for her. She likes her. She resonates with the Ghoul, despite only being thawed out not that long ago. "Well... that's just the way I remember it." She says, immediately making a decision to always come by and check-in on the woman. Hell or highwater.

"You know, if you haven't already, you should check Hotel Rexford. There's another pre-war ghoul hanging around there."

"I just might. It's late." Nora says, getting out her cap purse while looking back at the sky outside. The sky was starting to shift from the orange and purples to a dark blue. "So... about that food."

She pays for the food and tries paying for the room but Hancock is shelling out the ten caps before she can even dig in her pack. On her way up the stairs, she throws back to him, "You know I have the caps for it, right?"

"Ah but where's the fun in letting you pay for the room?" He shoots back, and when she turns to look at him over her shoulder, he's just grinning up at her.

"Are you gonna sleep with me?" She asks bluntly.

"Buy a man dinner first," he says, climbing the stairs past her, but at her gaze he finally gives in. "You heard the doll downstairs, there's only one room." He swings the keys around his finger to prove the point, his boots heavy on the wooden floorboards underneath them as he walks down the hallway.

She follows easily, rolling her eyes at him. "Are you gonna unlock the door?" She asks when he pauses in front of it, looking up at him.

"Ya' gonna ask me nicely?"

All prepared to snatch the keys out of his pitted hands, he laughs at her and puts the key into the doorknob. "Relax, I'm teasing ya'."

The door behind them opens the same time that Hancock pushes the door open. Neither plan on minding it, but then the person behind them is gasping and all but shouting "What?!"

When Nora turns around, she's met with a ghoul who looks... eerily familiar. This must be the ghoul Daisy was talking about. "No, it can't..." He trails off, blown wide eyes staring directly at her and nothing else. Not at Hancock, the Mayor, next to her. Just her.

"You know him?" Hancock asks from the side, but she doesn't even really get the chance to respond before the ghoul is yelling. "It's... i-it's YOU! From Sanctuary Hills, right?!"

She pauses in her tracks. His suit... she remembers it. Crisp and a clean beige but now a dirty and worn tan color. Why he hasn't updated his outfit in 200 years is a mystery to her. "Wait... Aren't you from Vault-Tec?" she asks, eyebrows furrowing in. She remembers being rude to him that day. Literal moments before the bombs fell, she had been sarcastic to the person who... She can't exactly bring herself to think of the word 'saved.'

"I am Vault-Tec!" he exclaims, his voice gravelly. "Twenty years of loyal service and now look at me. I wasn't on the list." He groans, hands coming up to push fingers into his eyes. "But you!" His fingers are flying off quicker than she can blink. "Look at you! Two hundred years and you're still perfect! How? How's that possible?"

She swallows uncomfortably. "They didn't tell you?"

"Tell me what?" he growls, and this is when Nora starts to feel the tiniest bit threatened. He's all scrawny bones and tight skin but she's lost weight since coming out of the Vault, too, and she's faced ghouls. She knows the weight they can throw. "What is it? How did you get through the last two hundred years untouched?"

She'll have to explain more in detail to Hancock later, if he hasn't picked up already.

Nora explains the cryo-pods, and how she only just came climbing out of the vault recently. He's upset. Upset at her, upset at Vault-Tec, upset at the world, she can't really tell. "Look at me! I'm a Ghoul! A freak!"

"Knock it off," Hancock warns.

The rep's personality didn't win her over before the bombs fell, and it wasn't winning her over now. "Hey," she snaps, that irritable crease in between her brows forming, "what happened to you isn't my fault, don't even think about coming for me." Her hand is resting on the pistol strapped to her thigh, but he doesn't really notice it.

In the end, she points him towards Sanctuary since he's so fucking miserable in Goodneighbor. "Will you visit?" He asks, and for a minute she debates saying no, just to be mean, but then she's reminded of Daisy and she sighs.

"I'm headed up that way soon. I'll see you then."

Hancock must disagree with her decision but honestly, she doesn't give a fuck about what he thinks at the moment. She's starving and she's praying that she'll be able to keep down the Instamash and Salisbury steak Daisy gave her.

Of course, nothing really goes her way, and she ends up vomiting it back up in the middle of the night while she's trying to sleep. Hancock is gone from her room, but she doesn't really take notice before passing out again.

She has nightmares, but by the time she's waking up in the morning, she doesn't remember what they were about. "Well good morning sleeping beauty," Hancock declares when he sees her awake from his seat in the corner of the room. He has some book in his lap which makes her feel slightly better about the fact that he obviously wasn't just watching her sleep.

Nora groans in response and gets up, stretching. Her stomach rumbles and she downs an entire can of purified water before filling Hancock in on what her plan is.

The Glowing Sea.

_

The two make their way back to Sanctuary. It's a whole thing, Preston welcomes her back with open arms, Mama Murphy tries spewing that "destiny" shit again, and Hancock laughs it up. Of course Preston will let Nora have the power armor, but only if she'll help a couple of settlements first.

Fine. Whatever. She tracks down a woman who was kidnapped, she clears out the old movie theater and sets a recruitment beacon up, and she figures that's that. Except... Preston wants more. Because of course he does. Give that man an inch and he'll take a mile.

After two weeks of traveling across the commonwealth and helping whoever Preston pointed a finger to, she's given the position of General.

"Not everyone can handle power," Hancock had said, that smug gleam in his eyes ever-present, "but I have a feeling you're up for the task."

It goes well, however begrudgingly she does it, until Marcy makes a backhanded comment. It's starting to get dark, she's finishing up assigning who does what duty, and Marcy says "You call this a Sanctuary? More like a cemetery."

She couldn't know. Of course, there's no possible way that she could've known, and to be completely honest the comment wasn't even directed at Nora.

The General sees red anyway.

It takes both Preston and Hancock pulling her off of the woman while Sturges pulls Marcy up off of the ground and away, out of Nora's sight. "I got it, boy scout," she distantly hears Hancock tell Preston when she shrugs their hands off of her to stalk away. She makes it to the bridge before Hancock is strolling up beside her. He doesn't say anything, not yet. 

Nora knows that was out of line.

She sighs and presses her shaky, adrenaline-filled hands up to her eyes to press into them. Hancock's boots fall heavy on the old and worn bridge underneath them, and he's pushing her shoulder until she leans against the railing. "You wanna talk about what just happened back there?"

No. She didn't. The woman inhales sharply and then slowly lets it out, the distinct sound of Hancock's lighter being flicked open and lit for a cigarette. 

The ghoul had pulled her aside when they were safe in Greygarden. He told her he didn't feel right about what they did to Bobbi, as if he were there when she pulled the trigger, as if they were even traveling together when she took Bobbi's job. He told her about how he had became the Mayor of Goodneighbor. He confided in her.

She appreciated it. Maybe she could return the sentiment.

"She made a backhanded comment... that shouldn't have affected me like it did," Nora sighs, finally dropping her hands and blinking away the black and white dots in her vision. The sky is dark enough that stars are beginning to show, and she stares at them instead of turning to meet Hancock's piercing gaze.

"This was your home, right?" He asks.

"Yeah, but it's... more than that." With this, she turns to the left, where he's already leaning against the railing next to her. Still, she doesn't look at him, instead looking over his shoulder at the hill behind the ruined houses. "That hill right there?" She points to it.

He follows her finger, turning to try and spot what she's pointing at. "With the fences? I see it."

"Vault 111 is up there. That's where I went when the bombs fell, with my family. We were cryogenically frozen, and every single one of my neighbors, my husband... they're all down there."

Hancock lets out a low whistle. "Damn."

"Marcy couldn't have known, I know that. I haven't even told Preston. I keep telling everyone that it's not their business, but when she said that Sanctuary was more of a cemetery than anything else, I just-" she sighs again, looks down at her knuckles that are streaked with the woman's blood. "She doesn't know just how right she is, and that made me so fucking angry." The ghoul is looking at her now, she can tell. "Sometimes I wish I didn't know either."

He bumps her hip with his own. "No point in wishing, princess."

That's a new nickname.

"I know."

By the time that dinner rolls around, she decides to take a nice walk. She knows everyone else knows by now, and she really doesn't want to deal with the uncomfortable tension she'll no-doubt feel. The eyes. It's the eyes she can't stand, she thinks.

Up on the same hill she pointed out to Hancock only an hour or two ago, she doesn't think. She stands on top of the vault door - maybe one day she'll go down again - and she stares out at the night-fallen scenery before her. It's been two hundred years, and throw in a couple of months since she first stepped out of the vault, but she still sees it like it happened yesterday. That bright nuclear flash, the wave of heat that followed. 

_"Send it down! Send it down now!"_

_"Oh god," she says, but it's hushed, like all of the breath has been punched out of her. There are people screaming in the background, the guards yelling to send the civilians on the platform down. The gears in the vault groan as they start to work, the platform jerking in place as the locks that hold it up disengage. It's like they can't move fast enough._

_Nate stands in front of her, holding Shaun, and for a moment... just for a split second, the world stops moving. The sky is pure white turning into a rancid yellow, and the mushroom cloud is massive, blooming in front of her eyes like a flower. She doesn't even have time to think about her parents and siblings downtown, she doesn't have time to think about anything as the wave of heat blasts past her face._

_Her husband turns, suddenly, crouching over to protect Shaun from the blast and to look Nora in the eyes. "Look at me!" he orders, but the words fall on deaf ears. It's only when he grasps her shoulder bruisingly hard that she finally looks away from the mushroom cloud and realizes that they're both crying. "Don't look at it, look at me!"_

"You alright, General?"

It isn't Hancock that joins her, up on that platform. Preston strides up next to her, slowly like she's a feral animal. She jumps in place as she's thrown out of her own mind and into reality, the sky becoming black and the mushroom cloud is gone. As if it had never happened.

"What is it, Preston?" Nora asks curtly. She turns to look at him, to stop looking at that goddamned horizon. 

He's holding two bowls of soup. "Mama Murphy made her specialty, it's just tato's, corn, and a little bit of radstag meat but it tastes damn good. She thought it'd make you feel better. Do you want some?"

She doesn't. "Sure. Thank you, Preston," she says and takes the bowl. She doesn't want Preston to stand there with his hands full when he obviously plans on eating up here with her. "Have you come up here to chew me out?" Maybe if she had it in her it would be a teasing question.

"No, but I did want to talk. Do you mind if we sit down?"

They sit down on the cold vault platform, and she doesn't think about it. Truly doesn't think about it. "I uh... I guess I tend to idolize people." He starts off, looking down at the soup in his hands and stirring it with his spoon. "See them how I want them to be."

Nora takes a bite of the soup, preparing for the worst, but actually? It tastes like gumbo. There are spices in there that Mama Murphy snuck in - spices she didn't know they had, alright - and it's not quite right, but it's the wasteland version of gumbo. Nora doesn't know how Mama Murphy knew, but gumbo was her favorite food growing up. Nate didn't know how to cook and she didn't really either, so she can't... really recall the last time she had it.

"Look." Preston sighs, putting his bowl down on the ground and turning towards her, nearly startling her. "When we first met, I could tell you were different. I thought maybe you could help us turn things around, really help make the Commonwealth a better place. That's why I asked you to be the General."

She gingerly puts down her bowl as well, focusing on the man next to her. "I know."

"I'm not here to chew you out, or to tell you that what you did was out of line. You already know that. And I know I don't know anything about you, but I just wanted to say..." Preston trails off for a moment, his brown eyes ever-earnest and understanding. It's intense, and she finds herself wanting to look away. "I hope someday you can let go of your anger."

She's silent for a moment, and when she finally finds the words to say, they burn like acid in her mouth. "You're right. You don't know anything about me."


End file.
